The present invention is in the technical field of oil recovery. More particularly, the present invention is in the technical field of portable oil recovery devices. More particularly, the present invention is in the technical field of portable oil recovery in marine environments. The present invention provides a method that may solve the problem of oil spills from the sea floor such as the one presented by the recent Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Conventional marine oil recovery devices are typically either immovable or exceedingly difficult to transport. British Petroleum, whose damaged oil well was the source of the Deepwater Spillage, applied a number of different and expensive techniques involving filters and absorbent pads which failed to contain the spillage. By the time British Petroleum managed to finally cap the wellhead, an estimated 4,900,000 barrels of crude oil had spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in billions of dollars in damages to the environment and local businesses.
The British Petroleum wellhead was under pressure, which was why the capping method applied in that case, had been so difficult to accomplish. The present invention allows for the release of the pressure in the wellhead, while directing the oil and gas mixture to the water surface via a vertical flexible hose. As it performs these functions, it is able to filter the water out from said vertical flexible hose, thus eliminating the need to separate oil from water at the surface. The next necessary steps will be described in detail later in this application.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,714, Booth relates to a device for containing and recovering effluents from submarine oil leaks at the source, in which the oil containment sleeve has several separated sections of the telescoping type, however it provides no mechanism for water to be filtered out from inside of the sleeve involved with that patent.
In contrast, this new invention allows water to be filtered out of the sleeve (Vertical Flexible Hose), thus making the collection and containment of the crude oil from the spill more efficient. By filtering out the water through the sleeve, only crude oil will be brought to the surface. The present invention is based on the following properties: 1) mineral oil is a non-polar organic compound which makes it more viscous than water; 2) mineral oil is less dense than water which means it will float on top of water; and 3) mineral oil is not soluble in water since mineral oil is non-polar and water is polar. These three properties provide the physical mechanics to separate oil from the water through this invention's filtering method.